Knocks: NIMASA & NPA; Kudos: To a Worthy Soldier

KNOCKS

Thumb down for government agencies like NIMASA and NPA in situation where they sponsor events without participating in it especially when it is necessary to do so.

Last week, the third anniversary of Day with Maritime Students held in Lagos. A program sponsored and supported by the Apex Maritime agency had no representative on ground.

When it was time for the agencies to answer critical questions raised by stakeholders present, the agency was visibly absent.

Subsequently, NIMASA should put their mouth where their money is. The agency should be on ground to answer questions where need be so that it would not look as if it has something to hide.

Nigeriamaritime360.com advises that the agency should deploy right people to events or centres where Maritime issues are discussed especially for the good of the country.

KNOCKS

The rate of prostitution around the port especially in the night, is one that calls for critical examination by relevant agencies of government.

The Tincan first gate is one arena where the trade is practised with reckless abandon. The girls whose ages range between 13 and 30, looking innocent during the day could be dangerous in the night as they swarm around men at ungodly hours seeking patronage.

Most men who indulge in the act mostly wait till late in the night to satisfy their urge.

It is pathetic because the girls are said to engage in the illicit business with multiple men in one night because the more men they have, the more money they make. They are mostly girls that have no place to sleep and cannot afford a room in a brothel.

Most of the drinking spots at the area are established as contact places to pick up a service girl at a token.

The fierce looking girls don’t mind any platform to service their customers. It could be under a parked truck, beside it or inside the trucks parked away from the road sides.

Their clients range from truck drivers, law enforcement agents, freight Forwarders and employees of shipping companies and terminal operators.

This act is condemnable because it can spread the dreaded HIV/AIDS or other sexually transmitted diseases.

Kudos

A thousand and more claps for the Nigerian Army personnel who intercepted a cache of arms imported into the country last week.

Having beaten all the security agents at the border post and the roads, smugglers would have boosted the Carnage powers of insurgents in the country with the importation of ammunition into the country.

Thank God for the eagle eye military officers in Ogun State who suspected and ransacked and seized a truck conveying 300,000 live cartridges into the country.

The ammunitions were reportedly smuggled into Nigeria through the Benin Republic border.

The cartridges were concealed in a false base of three heavy-duty trucks and had successfully gone past borders until they were intercepted at Igbogila-Ilara area of Ogun State.

Also, the drivers and crew members fled, upon closer inspection, the trucks were deemed empty until the security operatives unearthed the large cache of ammunition.

When they opened the metal cover, hundreds of cartons of cartridges of the 12-calibre were found concealed underneath.